Education: Graduates and Jobs: A Grave New World

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a silversmith on Cape Cod, while a 1970 Wisconsin graduate in anthropology is quietly living on a New York State farm, making harpsichords for sale. The income from a career in the crafts may be uncertain, but it is not necessarily low. Blacksmiths can make more than $10,000 a year, and according to one careful computation, a toolmaker today can net more in his lifetime than a judge. It is not, of course, the pay that attracts youth to the crafts; it is a chance to be autonomous and to have time "to look inside themselves," as one explains it.

Alternative careers also include (mostly low paying) with a basic commitment to service or to social change. At Duke, alternatives placement is primarily involved in informing students about such organizations as VISTA, the Peace Corps and the Teacher Corps (which still attract about 15,000 people of all ages annually and are being melded into one organization called the Action Corps), and the Office of Economic Opportunity. At Michigan State University, which runs the nation's biggest college placement operation, all 1,200 copies of each issue of its Vocations for Social Change newsletter are eagerly snapped up. It advertises openings for such jobs as organizers to work with sugar-cane laborers in Louisiana ($70 a week) and a female counselor at Washington, D.C.'s Runaway House ($50 a week plus rent). There was also one offer last fall from a retired accountant in Far Rockaway, N.Y., who wanted to finance two "real drop-outs" in starting a combination school and commune.

Circulation of Elites

The trend raises some serious questions about the future of the U.S. economy and indeed U.S. society; what will happen if millions of youths turn against the material rewards and the competitiveness that have motivated so much American progress? For the present, alternative careers appeal primarily to upper-and middle-class students, who tend to take affluence for granted. Children from blue-collar backgrounds, often the first in their families to go to college, are more often satisfied with conventional jobs; moreover, they need them. This circumstance has led Sociologists Peter and Brigitte Berger to suggest that if what Charles Reich calls "the greening of America" goes on apace, it may shade into a "blueing of America."

If middle-class youth drop out from the pursuit of influence and affluence, the children of the blue-collar workers may become the new professional class. "Should Yale become hopelessly 'greened.' Wall Street will get used to recruits from Fordham or Wichita State," say the Bergers. To a limited extent, this "circulation of elites" has already begun. This is due, however, not only to America's greening, but also to a conscious effort by Establishment institutions to open more doors. This year, for example, medical schools have accepted a more representative cross section of applicants than ever before.

Disturbing Dislocation

English majors pumping gas. Would-be engineers on assembly lines. Prospective social workers on welfare. For hundreds, perhaps even thousands of the class of '71, this disturbing dislocation may soon be reality—for a time anyway. The lagging pace of the recovery from last year's recession is only partly to blame. Just as the U.S. has begun to consider the possibility of slowing down